Side hustles are a great way to bring in some additional money, and there are a lot of different types of side hustles out there. The list of different side hustles you can take on is practically infinite. But you know what isn’t infinite? Your time. You only have 24 hours in a day. So let’s look at some of the dangers of having too many side hustles.
No Free Time
One of the biggest risks of side hustles is that if you’re working a full-time job and then also working a bunch of side hustles, you’re taking up all of your free time. Now, maybe you’re thinking “But I don’t want to waste time when I could be making money,” or “My side hustles are fun!” But everyone needs a bit of downtime in their life or you risk burnout. As your side hustles grow, be mindful of how much time you’re spending on them, and be realistic about whether or not you need to cut back so that you can have some time for yourself.
Letting Personal Responsibilities Slip
As you take on more side hustles and/or your side hustles grow, be wary of what is going on with the rest of your life. I have seen multiple friends let their side hustles grow to a point where they were no longer spending enough time with their families and their marriages started to suffer. In every case, they thought they were doing the best thing for their families by bringing in more money for the family.
Of course, the money was great, but their families wanted them to be spending time together. And of course, it’s not just about your family. Also included in the dangers of having too many side hustles are responsibilities to friends and just responsibilities to yourself and your home. Has your lawn gotten out of control? Are you skipping friends’ birthday parties and other gatherings? Worse, are you going to those gatherings and spending all of your time on your phone doing your side hustle?
Making Mistakes
One of the biggest risks of having too many side hustles is that you can start making mistakes, both in your side hustle and in your main job. While sometimes a side hustle can become a primary gig, for many people, they want to keep their main job because of the additional benefits, such as health insurance, 401k matching, and other benefits. Even if you only actively do your side hustle outside of work hours, it can be very easy to let your mind wander to all the things you have to accomplish for your side hustle during your main job hours. While everyone makes a mistake here and there, you certainly don’t want to risk your main job for your side hustle.
And if your side time is divided, it can be easy to make mistakes in your side hustles as well. We’ve all heard stories of people accidentally shipping the wrong products to a customer or mixing up shipping labels and sending one person’s order to a different person. Depending on what you’re shipping, this could be incredibly costly and also lead to some very negative reviews of your business.
Side hustles are great, but you have to make sure you aren’t taking on too much and keeping balance in your projects.
Read More:
- TikTok Side Hustles: Real or Waste of Time?
- Online Side Hustle Mistakes I Have Made
- Five Reasons That Make MLMs Attractive to Women
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
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